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An Interview with Kazuo IshiguroAuthor(s): Gregory Mason and Kazuo IshiguroReviewed work(s):Source: Contemporary Literature, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Autumn, 1989), pp. 335-347Published by: University of Wisconsin PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1208408 .
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8/10/2019 An Interview With Kazuo Ishiguro
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AN
INTERVIEW WITH
KAZUO ISHIGURO
Conducted
by
Gregory
Mason
In
January
1987,
Kazuo
Ishiguro
confirmed
his
position
as Britain's
leading young
novelist. He
was awarded the Whitbread
Book
of
the
Year
Prize,
the
largest
such cash
prize
in
Britain,
for his second
novel,
An Artist
of
the
Floating
World. Born
in
Nagasaki
in
1954,
Ishiguro
left
Japan
at the
age
of
five
and
has
not returnedsince.
In
most
respects
he
has
become
thoroughly English,
but
as a
writer he still
draws con-
siderably
on
his
early
childhood memories of
Japan,
his
family upbring-
ing,
and
the
great Japanese
films
of the fifties.
Soon after
publishing
a
few
short
stories,
Ishiguro jumped
to
prominence
in 1982 with
his
first
novel,
A
Pale View
ofHills.
A
Pale
View
of
Hills
was awarded the
Royal
Society
of Literature'sWinifred
Holtby
Prize and has since been translated into eleven
languages.
With
great
subtlety, Ishiguro
presents
a
first-person
narrator, Etsuko,
a
middle-aged
Japanese
woman,
now
exiled
in
England
some
thirty
years
after World
War
II.
Traumatized
by
the
recent suicide of
her
elder
daughter, she tells her own story and that of a wayward friend in
postwar Nagasaki
before she
left. Her
enigmatic
recall,
tantalizingly
hamstrung by gaps
and internal
inconsistencies,
works toward
a
dis-
quieting
and
haunting
revelation,
masterfully
embedded
in
the
point
of view itself.
Ishiguro's
second
novel,
An
Artist
of
the
Floating
World,
is set
in
the
Japan
of the late forties.
Ono,
an
aging
painter, gropes
in
his
diary
entries toward a realization of
the
ironies
of
Japan's
recent his-
tory, in which his own earlier, sincere convictions have enmeshedhim.
The
gently
ironic conclusion leaves Ono both humiliated and
digni-
fied,
a kind
of comic
Everyman
figure,
wistfully trapped
within
his
own horizons. Once
more,
the
first-person perspective
allows
Ishiguro
Contemporary
Literature
XXX,
3 0010-7484/89/0003-0335
$1.50/0
?1989
by
the Board of
Regents
of the
University
of Wisconsin
System
8/10/2019 An Interview With Kazuo Ishiguro
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Kazuo
Ishiguro.
Photo credit:
Jerry
Bauer
8/10/2019 An Interview With Kazuo Ishiguro
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to
finesse
the confines of
a
linear
plot,
and
again
the author
evinces
an
extraordinary
ontrol
of
voice,
an
uncannily Japanese
quality
emanating
from his
perfectly
pitched
English prose.
This
interview
ook
place
on
December
8, 1986,
n Mr.
Ishiguro's
South Londonhome.Throughouthe courseof hisremarks, shiguro
emerges
as
his own most
discriminatingnterpreter
nd sternest ritic.
His meticulous nterest
n
the
craft
of
fiction and lucid
grasp
of
his
own aims
and methods
makethis conversation n
unusually
valuable
introductionand
companion
to
the author's
works.
Q.
How
did
your family's
move
in
1960 from
Japan
to
England
affect
your upbringing
and
education?
A. Myparentshave remained airly Japanese n the way they go
about
things,
and
being broughtup
in
a
family
you
tend
to
operate
the
way
that
family
operates.
I still
speak
to
my parents
n
Japanese.
I'll
switchback into
Japanese
as soon
as I
walk
through
he
door.
But
my
Japanese
sn't
verygood.
It's
ike a
five-year-old's apanese,
mixed
in with
Englishvocabulary,
nd
I
use
all
the
wrong
orms.
Apart
from
that,
I've had a
typical English
education.
I
grew
up
in
the south of
England
and
went
to
a
typical
Britishschool. At Kent
University,
I
studiedphilosophyand English,and at East Anglia I did an M.A.
in
creative
writing.
Q.
Do
you
feel
you're
writing
n
any particular
radition?
A.
I
feel that
I'm
very
much
of the Western radition.
And
I'm
quite
often amusedwhen
reviewersmake a
lot of
my
being
Japanese
and
try
to
mention he
two
or threeauthors
hey'vevaguely
heard
of,
comparing
me to Mishima r
something.
t
seems
highly nappropriate.
I've
grownup reading
Westerniction:
Dostoevsky,Chekhov,
Charlotte
Bronte,
Dickens.
Q.
Are there
any
influences from the
Japanese
side
as
well?
A.
Tanizaki,Kawabata,Ibuse,
and a little
Soseki,
perhaps.
But
I'm
probably
more nfluenced
by
Japanese
movies.
I
see a
lot
of
Japa-
nese films. The visual
images
of
Japan
have a
great poignancy
for
me,
particularly
n
domestic
films like
those of Ozu and
Naruse,
set
in
the
postwar
era,
the
Japan
I
actually
remember.
Q.
Your irst
novel,
A
Pale View
of
Hills,
also dealswith
memories
of
Japan,
but
they
are
repressed
memories
with
ellipses
hat
the
reader
has to work to fill in.
336
|
CONTEMPORARY
LITERATURE
8/10/2019 An Interview With Kazuo Ishiguro
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A.
Yes.
In
that
book,
I
was
trying
something
ratherodd with
the
narrative.The main
strategy
was to leave a
big gap.
It's
about a
Japa-
nese
woman,Etsuko,
who is exiled
n
Britain
n
middle
age,
and
there's
a certainarea of
her life that's
very painful
to her.
It has
something
to do with hercomingover to the West and the effect it has on her
daughter,
who
subsequently
ommitssuicide.She talks all around
t,
but she
leaves hat as a
gap.
Instead,
she tells another
toryaltogether,
going
back
years
and
talking
about
somebody
she once knew.
So
the
whole narrative
trategy
of the book
was
about
how
someone
ends
up
talking
about
hings
hey
cannot ace
directly hrough
other
people's
stories.
I
was
trying
o
explore
hat
type
of
language,
how
people
use
the
language
of
self-deception
and
self-protection.
Q.
There
are
certain
hings,
a bit
like
in
Henry
James'sThe Turn
of
the
Screw,
hat
are
just
unresolved.
For
instance,
n
the
pivotal
scene
on the
bridge
whenEtsuko
s
talking
o
her friendSachiko's
daughter
Mariko,
she switcheswithout
warning
to
addressing
he
child
as
if
she
herself
were
actually
he child'smother.At the most
extreme,
hat
leads the
reader
o
ponder
whether
he two
women werenot
one and
the same
person.
A. What I intended was this: because it's reallyEtsukotalking
about
herself,
and
possibly
that
somebody
else, Sachiko,
existed or
did
not
exist,
the
meanings
hat Etsuko
mputes
o
the life
of
Sachiko
are
obviously
the
meanings
that are
relevant
to
her
(Etsuko's)
own
life.
Whatever he facts
were about what
happened
o Sachiko and
her
daughter,
hey
are
of
interest
o
Etsuko now becauseshe can use
them
to talk about
herself.
So
you
have this
highly
Etsuko-edversion
of this other
person's
story;
and
at the most intense
point,
I
wanted
to
suggest
hat Etsuko had
dropped
his
cover. It
just
slips
out: she's
now
talking
aboutherself.She's no
longer
bothering
o
put
it in the
third
person.
Q.
I
thought
that the
effect
of this
scene
was
quite
stunning.
A.
Yes,
that
scene itself
works all
right,
if
the rest of the book
had built
up
to that
kind
of
ambiguity.
But
the trouble s that the flash-
backsaretoo
clear,
n
a
way.
They
seem o be relatedwith he
authority
of
some
kind of
realistic
iction. It
doesn'thave the same
murkiness
of someone rying o wadethrough heirmemories, rying o manipu-
late
memories,
as
I
would
have
wanted.
The mode
is
wrong
n
those
scenes of the
past. They
don't have the texture of
memory.
And for
that reason the
ending
doesn't
quite
come
off. It's
just
too sudden.
ISHIGURO
I
337
8/10/2019 An Interview With Kazuo Ishiguro
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I
intended
with
that scene
for
the reader
inally
o
realize,
with a sense
of
inevitability,
"Of
course,
yes,
she's
finally
said it."
Instead,
it's
a
shock.
I
didn't
quite
have the technical
sophistication
o
pull
it
off,
and the result
s that it's a bit
baffling.
Fortunately,
a lot of
people
quite enjoybeingbaffled.As you say, you'reknockedoversideways.
You feel
you
have to read the book
again,
which is a differentsort
of effect.
Q.
There
s
a
dissonancebetween he
picture
hat
Etsuko
paints
of herself when
back
in
Japan
as a
very
timid,
conventional
person
and the rather
bold,
unconventional
hings
she
emerges
as
actually
having
done:
leaving
her
husband,
eaving
her
homeland,
and so on.
That's anothergap the readerhas to wrestlewith.
A.
Yes,
that's
the
gap
in A
Pale View
of
Hills. We can
assume
that the real Etsukoof the
past
is somewhat
nearer
he
mousy
Etsuko
she talks about
in
the forties than she is to the Sachiko
figure.
After
all,
that is
her
account,
the emotional
story
of how she came
to
leave
Japan,although
hat doesn't
ell
you
the actual
acts.
But
I'mnot
inter-
ested
n
the solid facts. The focus of the book is
elsewhere,
n
the emo-
tional
upheaval.
Q.
In
some
ways, especially
n
the dream
sections,
it
seems as
if
Etsuko
is
trying
to
punish
herself.
She lashes herself
with
grief
and
guilt
at the
suicideof
her
daughter
Keiko. Yet
n
other
ways,
it
seems
as
if
she's
trying
to
rearrange
he
past
so that she doesn'tcome
out
of
it
too
badly.
Am I
right
in
seeing
these two
things?
A.
Yes,
the
book is
largely
based
around
her
guilt.
She feels
a
great
guilt,
that out of
her
own
emotional
ongings
for a
different
sort
of
life, she sacrificedher firstdaughter'shappiness.Thereis that side
to
her that feels resistant o her
youngerdaughter
Nikki,
who tells
her,
"You've
ot nothing
to
worry
about,"
and that she
did
exactly
the
right thing.
She feels
that this isn't
quite
a true account.
But on
the
other
hand,
she does need
to
arrange
her memories
n
a
way
that
allows her to
salvage
some
dignity.
Q.
Therewere
some
partly
developed
omic hemes
n A Pale View
of Hills,
but
they
didn't
quite
take hold.
A.
Yes,
whateverechoes
I
wanted
to start between
Etsuko and
Ogata,
the
father-in-law,
ery
much
faded
away.
Let's
say
I was a less
experienced
writerat
that
point,
and I think that one
of the
things
that
happens
o less
experienced
writers s that
you
cannot
control he
338
I
CONTEMPORARY
LITERATURE
8/10/2019 An Interview With Kazuo Ishiguro
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book,
as
more
experienced
writers
an.
You
bring
n
an
element
with-
out
realizing
what the
implication
of
this is on
the rest of
the
book.
A
lot of the
things
I
was
initially
most
interested
n
got completely
upstaged
by
things
I
almost
inadvertently
et
in
motion. But
you get
veryexcitedwhenyou'rewritingyour firstnovel. And once having
figured
out
these clever little narrative
trategies,
hen
you bring
in
this and
you
bring
in
that,
and
suddenlyyou
find that two-thirdsof
the book is concerned
with
something
else
altogether.
The
Etusko-
Sachiko
story
about exile and
parental
responsibility
was
essentially
something
which
I
waylaidmyself
into. I often
would
bring
n
things
simply
because
they
worked rather
nicely
on that
particular
page
in
that
particular hapter.
And
suddenly,
'd
find
myself
with a
daughter
who'dhungherself,orwhatever,on myhands andI'dhave to figure
out how
to deal
with that.
If
you really
want
to
write
something,
you
shouldn't
bringthings
into
your
book
lightly.
It's a bit
like
taking
n
lodgers. They're
going
to
be with
you
a
long
time.
I
think
the
most
important hing
I
learned
between
writing
he first and secondnovels
is
the element
of
thematic
discipline.
Q.
What drew
you
to
your subject
and
to
the theme
of
the
older
artist
in
your
second
novel,
An Artist
of
the
Floating
World?Were
you thinkingof anyonein particular,or of any groups?
A. Not
really,
no.
I
suppose
was
thinking
f
myself
and
my peers,
the
generation
hat came
to
university
n
the sixties
and the seventies.
I
write out of
a kind of
projected
ear of
reaching
a
certain
age
and
looking
back.
I
am interested
n
that
particular
orm
of
wasting
one's
talents,
not because
you spent
your
whole ife
lying
on
your
back,
not
doing
anything.
I'm interested
n
people
who,
in
all
sincerity,
work
very
hard and
perhapscourageously
n
their lifetimestoward
some-
thing,fullybelievinghatthey're ontributingo something ood, only
to find that the social climate
has done a
topsy-turvy
on them
by
the
time
they've
eached
he ends
of
their
ives.
The
very
hings
hey
thought
they
could be
proud
of have now
become
things
they
have
to be
ashamed
f.
I'm
drawn
o that
period
n
Japanese
istory
because
hat's
what
happened
o
a whole
generation
f
people.
They
ived
n
a
moral
climate
hat
right
up
untilthe end of
the warsaid
that
the
most
praise-
worthy thing they
could do
was to use
their talents
to
furtherthe
nationalistcausein Japan,only to find afterthe war that this had
been
a
terriblemistake.
An
Artist
of
the
Floating
World
s an
explora-
tion of
somebodytrying
to come
to terms
with the fact
that
he
has
somehow misused
his talents
unknowingly,
imply
becausehe didn't
have
any
extraordinary
ower
of
insight
into the world he lived in.
ISHIGURO
339
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Q.
Where
is An
Artist
of
the
Floating
World
set?
A.
It's
just
an
imaginarycity,
for various
reasons.
Once
I
set
it
in
an
actual
city,
then
the
obligation
o
actually
heck
up
would
become
boringlyrelevant,
and
thereseemed o be no
point.
It
was of no value
to
me
if I
could
claim that it's
authentically
et
in
Tokyo
or not.
In
fact,
in
many
ways
it would
play
into
the hands of a
certainkind
of
misreader,
who
wished he book to
be
simply
some kind of
realist ext
telling
you
what
Tokyo
was like after
the war.
By
setting
t in
an
un-
specified
venue,
I
could
suggest
hat
I'm
offering
his
as a novel about
people
and
their
lives,
and
that
this
isn't
some
piece
of
documentary
writing
about a real
city.
And
it
just
gave
me a lot
more freedom.
If I
wanteda
pavilion
with
anterns round ts
eaves,
I
could
ust
invent
one. I couldinvent as manydistrictsas I couldthinkof names.All
these
things
would
have been
technically
ather
rksome,
f I
had had
to
keep
referring
o a
map,
and to
the actual
history
of
Tokyo.
The
other
temptation
was
to set
it in
Nagasaki,
the
only
Japa-
nese
city
I
have
some
familiarity
with,
and
which
I
could
have
got
some
people
to
tell
me about. But of
course,
overwhelmingly
or
Western
eaders,
when
you
bring
n
Nagasaki hey
think
of the atomic
bomb,
and
I
had
no
place
for
the atomic bomb in
this
novel. And
so, although possiblyI mighthave been able to refer more or less
authentically
o
Nagasaki
landmarks
and
districts,
I
didn't
want to
do
it
simply
because it
would
have been
another bomb book.
Q.
Was
here
any
particular
eason
why you
had
your
central har-
acter
be a
painter,
ratherthan
a
writer,
or
even an actor?
A.
No
great
reason,
no. I
was not
intrinsically
nterested
n
paint-
ing
or
painters.
It
just
seemedto
me that a
painter
served
my
pur-
posesbetterthan some of the othercareers.I thinkit's alwaysdan-
gerous
to
have a writer
n
a
novel.
That leads
you
into
all
kinds
of
areas,
unless
you're
specifically
nterested
n
talking
about the
nature
of
fiction.
But
I
try
to avoid hat
very
postmodern
lement
n
my
books.
Q.
Did
you
do
any
research
nto how
painters' roups
at
the
time
behaved?
What
props
did
you
have
in
imagining
hese
scenes?
A. I
did
very
little
research,
primarily
because
research s
only
of
any
interest o
me
in
order o
check
up
after I've
done
something,
o
makesureI'mnotgettinganythingwildlywrong.I needcertain hings
to
be
the
way they
are
in
my
books for
the
purposes
of
my
themes.
In An
Artist
of
the
Floating
World,
I
needed
to
portray
this world
where a leader
figure
held this
incredible
psychological
sway
over his
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subordinates.
And for subordinates
o break
free,
they
had
to dis-
play
a remarkable
amount of determination.That's
what I
needed,
and as far
as I was
concerned,
hings
n
my
Japan
were
going
o
operate
like that.
I am
not
essentially
oncerned
with
a realist
purpose
n writ-
ing. I justinventa Japanwhichservesmyneeds.AndI putthatJapan
together
out of little
scraps,
out of
memories,
out
of
speculation,
out
of
imagination.
Q.
In
some
respects,you
have a narrative
etup
in
An Artist
of
the
Floating
World
similar to that
in A
Pale View
of
Hills. The whole
narrative s recounted
by
a
person
who is
somewhat
unreliable,
o the
reader
has
to attendto other
things
to
gauge
the
extent
of
the
unreli-
ability.Ono,thenarrator, ddresseshe readerdirectlywiththe book's
opening
sentence:
"If
on a
sunny day you
climb
the
steep path.
..
."
This
strikes
an
almost
intimate
one,
as
if
he
is
talking
to a
friend
or
acquaintance.
Elsewhere,
his
account sounds more
like
an
apologia,
a
public explanation
or what
he did. Who is
the "reader"
ere,
and
what
exactly
is the
narrativesituation?
A.
The reader
hat
I
intended
obviously
sn't the
"you"
hat
Ono
refersto. Ono
in
his
narrativeassumes hat
anybody
reading
t must
livein thecityand must be awareof its landmarks. usedthatdevice
mainly
to create a world. I
thought
it
helped
strengthen
his
mental
landscapemapped
out
entirely
by
what Ono
was
conscious
of,
and
nothing
else.
And
whether he reader
registers
t
consciously
or
not,
it
cannot
help
but
create he effect
of
actually
eavesdropping
n Ono
being
intimate
with
somebody
n his
own town. To a
large
extent,
the
reason
for
Ono's downfall was that he lacked
a
perspective
o see
beyond
his own
environment
and to stand
outside the actual values
of
his
time.
So
the
question
of this
parochialperspective
was
quite
central o the
book,
andI triedto buildthat into the whole narrative.
At
the same
time,
I'm
suggesting
hat Ono is
fairly
normal;
most
of
us
have
similar
parochial
visions.
So the book
is
largely
about the
inability
of normalhuman
beings
to see
beyond
their immediate
ur-
roundings,
and
because
of
this,
one
is at
the
mercy
of what
this world
immediately
around one
proclaims
tself to be.
Q.
With
the somewhat
doddery
narrator's onstant
digressions,
theplotlinekeeps anningout allthetime.Doesthissuggesthatyou're
trying
to
escape
from the
tyranny
of a
linear
plot?
A.
Yes, yes
it does
I
don't like the idea that
A
has to come before
B and that B has to come before C because he plot dictates
t. I
want
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certain
things
to
happen
n a
certain
order,
according
o how I feel
the
thing
should be
arranged
onally
or whatever.I can have Ono
in
a
certain
kind
of
emotionalmood
or
emotional
way
of
talking
about
things
when
I
want him to
be,
and it
looks like he's
just
drifted,
but
frommy pointof view,it'squitecontrived. 'vefiguredout littletran-
sitory
connectingparagraphs
whereby
he
appears
o
drift
from one
section
o
the next.
This
might
give
the senseof
his
being
old and
vul-
nerable,
but
people
do tend to talk like
this
anyway.
And
more
cru-
cially,
people
tend
to think like
this.
So
I'm not
dictated
to
by
the
chronology
of
events,
and I can reveal
things
just
when I want
to.
Q.
And
again,
there are unresolved
points
of fact
in
the narra-
tive, open to varyingconstructionsby the reader.
A. Yes.
As
usual,
I'mnot
overwhelmingly
nterested
n
what
really
did
happen.
What's
mportant
s
the emotional
aspect,
he actual
posi-
tions the characters
ake
up
at different
points
in
the
story,
and
why
they
need
to take
up
these
positions.
Q.
At
the same
time,
you
draw a
very
explicit
thematic
parallel
between
he
way
Ono's mentor reated
him,
confiscating
his
pictures
and
expelling
him
from
his
villa,
and the
way
that
Ono
subsequently
treatshis own
pupil,
Kuroda.
A.
I'm
pointing
o the
master-pupil
hing
recurring
ver
and over
again
n the world.
In
a
way,
I'm
using Japan
as a sort of
metaphor.
I'm
trying
to
suggest
that
this isn't
something
peculiar
o
Japan,
the
need to
follow
leaders
and the
need
to
exercise
power
over
subordi-
nates,
as
a sortof motor
by
which
ociety
operates.
'm
nviting
Western
readers
o
look at this
not as
a
Japanese
phenomenon
but as a
human
phenomenon.
Q.
In
the
floating
world
of urban
Tokugawa
Japan,
with its
pleasure
quarters
and
puppet plays,
or
at least
in
the
art that came
out of the
floating
world,
irreconcilable
onflicts are
often resolved
by
melodramatic uicides.
The title
of
your
book,
An Artist
of
the
Floating
World,
necessarily
onjures
resonancesof this
whole tradi-
tion.
Yet
you
offer
a
gently
ronic,
comic
solution
to
your
tale,
some-
what at variance
with
the
more
melodramatic,
onventional
xpecta-
tionsof thegenre.Life-affirmingaluesprevail, ather haneverything
descending
nto a welterof
despair
or thelich%
of suicide.The narra-
tive does
hint,
at certain
points,
that Ono's
family
are worried
about
sucha
possibility.
nstead,
Ono owns
up
to his
errors,
makeshis accom-
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modation
with
the
changing
times,
and
still
manages
to
cling
to a
measure
of
self-vindication.
Were
you
in
any
sense
offering
an
untra-
ditional or even
un-Japanese
resolution
to his
conflict?
A. Well,you see, I don't feel that
it
is un-Japanese.
A
whileago,
I
published
a short
story
entitled
"A
Family
Supper."
The
story
was
basically ust
a
big
trick,
playing
on Western
eaders'
xpectations
bout
Japanese
people
who
kill
themselves.
It's
never
stated,
but Western
readers
are
supposed
o
think
that these
people
are
going
to
commit
mass
suicide,
and of course
they
do
nothing
of
the sort.
Thisbusinessabout
committing
eppuku
or whatever.
t's
as alien
to me as
it is to
you.
And it's as
alien
to most modern
Japanese
as
it
is to Western
people.
The
Japanese
are
in
love
with
these melo-
dramaticstories where heroescommitsuicide,but peoplein Japan
don't
go
around
killing
themselves
as
easily
as
people
in
the West
assume.
And
so
my
book
may
not
have
a
traditional
Japanesestory
ending
in
that
sense,
but
a
lot of the
great Japanese
movies of the
fifties
wouldnot
dream
of
having
an
ending
ike that.
And
if
I
borrow
from
any
tradition,
t's
probably
romthat tradition hat tries
o avoid
anything
hat is
overtly
melodramatic r
plotty,
that
tries
basically
to remain
within
the
realms of
everyday
experience.
I'mverykeenthat whenever portraybooks thataresetinJapan,
even
if it's
not
very accuratelyJapan,
that
people
are seen
to
be
just
people.
I ask
myself
the same
questions
about
my
Japanese
charac-
ters
that
I
would
about
English
characters,
when
I'm
asking
the
big
questions,
what's
really important
o them.
My
experience
of
Japa-
nese
people
in
this realm
is that
they're
ike
everybody
else.
They're
like
me,
my parents.
I don't
see them
as
people
who
go
around
slash-
ing
their stomachs.
Q.
What sort
of
mood
did
you
wish
to
portray
n
the
narrator,
Ono,
by
the
end
of the book?
A.
I
wanted
that
slightly
painful
and
bittersweet
eeling
of
him
thinking:
"Japan
made
a
mess
of
it,
but how
marvelous
hat
in
a
few
years
it's all set
to have a
completely
resh
go.
But a man's
ife
isn't
like
that.
In
a man's
ife,
there's
only
room for
this one
go."
And Ono's
done
it,
he
made
a
go
of
it,
and it
didn't
turn out well.
His
world
is
over, and all he can do is wish the youngergenerationwell, but he
is no
part
of that
world.
And
I was
interested
n
the various
strategies
somebody
would
employ
to
try
to
salvage
some
sort
of
dignity,
o
get
into a
position
where he could
say,
"Well,
at
least
X, Y,
and Z."
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ISHIGURo
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a
way,
Ono
is
continuallybeing
cornered.He
keeps
having
to admit
this
and admit
that,
and
in
the end
he
even
accepts
his own smallness
in
the world.
I
suppose
I
wanted to
suggest
that
a
person's
dignity
isn't
necessarily
dependent
on what he
achieves
n his
life or in his
career; hat there is somethingdignifiedaboutOno in the end that
arises
simply
out of his
being
human.
Q.
And
through
the
course
of his
narrative,
he
reader
can see
Ono,
to
preserve
his
self-esteem,
graduallymaking
concessions
and
accommodations
hat he himself cannot see?
A.
Yes,
that
certainly
was the
intention.
t
uses
very
much he
diary
method.
Technically,
he
advantage
f
the
diary
narrative
s
that each
entrycan be writtenfrom a differentemotionalposition. What he
writes
in
October
1948
is
actually
written
out of a different set of
assumptions
han the
pieces
that are written
ater
on.
That
really
was
the
sole
reason
or
dividing
he
book
up
into
four
chunks,
each
osten-
sibly
written n
a
sitting
or whatever t the
point
when
he
date
s
given:
just
so we can
actually
watch his
progress,
and so
that
the
language
itself
changes slightly.
Q.
And
this
in
turn underscores he
larger
theme of the ironies
andvicissitudes f the
floating
world.
Havingrejected
hedemimonde
"floating
world"
subjects
of
his
mentor,
Ono received
he
patriotic
award or his
propagandist
oster
art and
experienced
short
moment
of
triumph.
But this
too was
fleeting.
A.
Yes,
that's
why
he
is
the artist of
the
floating
world,
just
as
the
floating
world
celebrated
ransitorypleasures.
Even if
they
were
gone
by
the
morning,
and
they
were built
on
nothing,
at least
you
enjoyed
them
at the
time.
The idea
is
that
there
are
no solid
things.
And the
irony
is that Ono had
rejected
hat whole
approach
o life.
But
in
the
end,
he too is left
celebrating
hose
pleasures
hat
evaporated
when
the
morning
ight
dawned.So
the
floating
worldcomes to
refer,
in
the
largermetaphorical
ense,
to the fact that
the
valuesof
society
are
always
in
flux.
Q.
Your
first-person
narrators,
a
late
middle-aged
woman in
A
Pale View
of
Hills and an older man
in An
Artist
of
the
Floating
World,
are far removedfromyou in your personalsituation. How did you
manage
o
inhabit
these
people? Through
some
kind of
imaginative
migration?
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A. It neveroccurred o
me that
it
would be a
technical
difficulty.
It'srather ike the
question
about
realismand
Japanese
details.I
didn't
start
from
the
point
of
view
of
saying,
"What does a
middle-aged
woman hink
ike?"
That
way you
can
get
very
ntimidated
y
the
whole
project.I neededa certainconsciousness,a certain tateof mind,and
it
just
naturally
followed that this
would be a
middle-aged
woman
or an older man. Ono couldn't
be
anything
else.
Q.
It is
remarkable,
or
someone
writing
n
English,
how much
of
a
Japanese
exture
your
writing
achieves.
How,
for
instance,
did
you
set
aboutthe
problem
of
projecting
differentiated
apanese
oices
through
the
medium of
the
English language?
A. Thereare two
things.
BecauseI am
writing
n the first
person,
even
the
prose
has
to
conform o
the characterization
f the narrator.
Etsuko,
in A
Pale
View
of
Hills,
speaks
in
a
kind of
Japanese
way
because
she's a
Japanese
woman. When she sometimes
peaks
about
Japanese
hings, explaining
what a
kujibiki
stand
is,
for
instance,
it
becomes clear
that she's
speakingEnglish
and that it's a second
lan-
guage
for her. So
it
has to have that kind of
carefulness,
and,
par-
ticularly
when
she's
reproducing apanesedialogue
n
English,
it has
to have a certainforeignnessabout it.
The
thing
about
Ono
in
An
Artist
of
the
Floating
World
is that
he's
supposed
o be
narrating
n
Japanese;
t's
just
that
the reader
s
getting
it
in
English.
In
a
way
the
language
has to be almost like a
pseudotranslation,
which
meansthat
I
can't
be
too fluent and
I
can't
use
too
many
Western
colloquialisms.
It
has
to be
almost
like
sub-
titles,
to
suggest
that
behind the
English language
there'sa
foreign
language
oing
on.
I'm
quite
conscious
of
actually
iguring
hese
things
out whenI'mwriting,usinga certainkind of translationese.Some-
times
my
ear
will
say:
"Thatdoesn't
quite ring
true,
that
kind of lan-
guage.
Fine
if
this were
just
English people,
but
not here."
Q.
When
you
write,
do
you
have
anyone
who
helps
you
to
revise?
A.
I
tend to work
entirely
alone.
I
have
an
editorat
Faber,
Robert
McCrumb,
who often sees the
penultimate
draft.
In
both
novels,
he
made
suggestions
hat
were
very
helpful,
but
they
tend
to
be
pretty
minor. Normallyhe'llpoint to that part of the book that seems to
be weak and ask me to look at
it
again.
But
I'll
only
show him
my
manuscript
when
I
think
it's more or less finished. And I
certainly
ISHIGURO
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don'tdo this businessof
going through
he
prose
with
somebody
else,
page
by
page.
Q.
Do
you
feel
any
pressure
o
experiment
ormally?
A. I did at a certain ime.When iterary
people
alk about"young
writers,"
hey
almost
mply
that this
is
synonymous
with
writers
who
are
experimenting.
ou often read
phrases
ike,
"They're
mashing
up
this,
or
subverting
hat." So
I think
that
it's
very
natural
o
feel that
the older
generation
has somehow
already
done
that,
and that
now
you've got
to. But
I
try
not to let
it
become
too central
o what
I'm
writing.
The
kind
of book
I
find
very
edious
s the kindof
book whose
raison
d'etre
s to
say
something
about
literary
orm.
I'm
only
inter-
estedin literary xperimentnsofaras it servesa purposeof exploring
certain hemes
with
an emotional
dimension.
I
always ry
to
disguise
those elements
of
my
writing
that
I
feel
perhaps
are
experimental.
Q.
What are
you working
on now?
A. I'm
writing
anothernovel. Thisone is set
in
England.
t'sabout
a butler who wants to
get
close to a
great
man,
close to the center
of
history.
I
also write
television
films. I've written wo of these
and
we'retryingto get a third off the ground,this time a cinemafilm.
So I've
alwaysgot
at
leasttwo
thingsgoing,
a
screenplay
nd a novel.
Filmmaking
s
very, very
different from
writing.
You shoot to
a
set
schedule,
and the
crew knocks
off at a certain
time;
otherwise
you
pay
a fortune
in
overtime. You
just
haven't
got
the
opportunity
o
keep
doing
scenes over and over till
they're
perfect.
It's
almost like
a concert
performance
r
something,
where
you've
got
to
get
it
right,
then and
there.
It's
somewherebetween
a
performance
art
and the
more
meditative,
deliberate
roduction
hat
writing
s.
In
writing,you
can rewrite
and
rewrite
and
rewrite
at no
cost,
otherthan
what t costs
for the
paper,
and
you
can
spend
a
long, long
time.
Q.
How do
you
see
your
work
developing,
and what do
you
see
as
your
abiding
preoccupations?
A.
Well,
it's
very
difficult
to
say
if I'll
have the same
preoccupa-
tions
in
ten
years'
ime
that
I
have
today.
Thereare certain
hings
in
my
books
that I'm not
particularly
nterested
n,
although
hey
have
takenupa fairly mportant hunkof mywriting.I'm notparticularly
interested
n
themesabout
parental esponsibility,
r evenabout
exile,
although
these
seem
to be
very
much to the fore
in
the
first
book.
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I'm not at all
interested
n
the
question
of
suicide,
although
I'm
aware
that that
has been
in
both books
in
some form or another.But
things
like
memory,
how one uses
memory
for one's own
purposes,
one's
own
ends,
those
things
nterestme more
deeply.
And
so,
for the time
being,I'mgoingto stickwiththe firstperson,anddevelopthewhole
businessabout
following
somebody's
houghts
around,
as
they try
to
trip
themselves
up
or to hide
from
themselves.
ISHIGURO
I
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